PS, We Love You: Harnessing the Power of PlayStation 3

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PS, We Love You: Harnessing the Power of PlayStation 3

When Sony launched the PlayStation 3 gaming console in 2006, its graphics were muted; designers didn’t know how to handle the system’s complicated Cell processor. But now, after six years and four PS3 games’ worth of experience, development studio Naughty Dog has what promises to be a visual high point in the PS3 title The Last of Us (above), out in June.
In fact, the main lesson of the PS3’s existence might be that the evolution of graphics within a single console’s lifespan can be more impressive than the leap from one generation to the next. The PlayStation 4 is supposed to arrive at the end of this year, but developers won’t learn to harness its power for quite a while. Until that happens, here’s a look back at the PS3’s watershed visual moments.

2006 Resistance: Fall of Man

Breakthrough: Hi-res rendering
Though its textures feel dated now, Resistance was the PS3’s killer app. Insomniac Games harnessed the new console’s Blu-ray capability, allowing for environments so impressive that the Church of England threatened to sue Sony over the game’s “photo-realistic” Manchester Cathedral.

2007 Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Breakthrough: Mesh processing
With Uncharted, Naughty Dog came up with a new approach to the PS3: rerouting data from the overworked graphics processor to other parts of the console’s hardware. The trick helped create a seamless no-load-time adventure with detailed characters, animations, and effects.

2008 Metal Gear Solid 4

Breakthrough: Dynamic textures
For his magnum opus, creator Hideo Kojima and his team pushed the graphical capabilities of “shaders,” tiny programs that adjust lighting on isolated game objects. Result: hero Solid Snake’s Octo-Camo adaptive stealth suit, which can take on the appearance of any surface in real time.

2010 Heavy Rain

Breakthrough: Motion-capture
For their noir love letter, designer David Cage and his team at Quantic Dream developed a 28-camera motion-capture setup—14 of them for facial movement alone. The PS3 could handle all the info, and the result actually avoided falling into the uncanny valley—or at least came close. It’s a pretty wide valley.